Spider Boy/Chapter 16
Look out for that nigger!
Heeding the call of an electrician, Ambrose anxiously awaited the onslaught of a bellicose Ethiopian. Suddenly, struck squarely and severely on the top of his head, he was borne to the floor where he lay prone and trembling under a black cloth stretched on a light wooden frame.
He extricated himself to hear Auburn Six explain: One of the reflectors swung loose. We call them niggers on the lot.
This incident introduced Ambrose to the stage where Martell Hallam was directing Spider Boy.
His next surprise was of a more agreeable nature. Hallam invited him to sit down in a chair across the back of which his name, Ambrose Deacon, was printed in bold white letters.
His third surprise was equivocal. The set in front of him—a superb affair—seemed to represent the ball-room in the palace of a rich Russian nobleman. Auburn Six, in an evening gown of surpassing splendour, a tiara of emeralds around her brow, was wrapped in a sable cloak. Cossacks in shakos and cartridge belts, and innumerable civilian guests, male and female, in elaborately correct evening attire, wandered about.
Ambrose whisperingly questioned Philip Lawrence: How did your circus girl get into this set?
Philip whispered back: Oh, didn't I tell you? We dropped the circus. Hallam objected that circuses had been overdone. This is your third and best idea.
Ambrose was really growing up. What is my third idea? he inquired blandly.
As Philip paused to light a cigarette before replying, a voice cried: Hey there, you angels, switch those ashcans to the right.
is now a Russian spy employed by the Tsar, Lawrence explained. Really, Auburn in boy's clothes.
But . . .
Oh, she's a girl all right. In this scene she works without whiskers. I had to put her in trousers occasionally to justify the title. That's a wow of a title you thought up, by the way. That alone would sell the picture.
Switch those broads and get that baby off the prop wagon over on this lens louse.
Aside from the electricians who seemed to be obeying orders addressed to them in early Czechoslovakian, no one appeared to be doing anything. The extra people wandered about the huge stage, in and out of the set, talking and smoking.
When do they start work? Ambrose demanded.
Well, they've been trying to shoot this scene for four days now. Everybody's been made up and dressed for it for about ninety hours, roughly speaking. Something always goes wrong. . . . Philip interrupted himself long enough to extend a roguish hand towards the back of an extra boy who presently sailed in the air emitting a prodigious scream. . . . Grinning, Philip continued, I've forgotten what's wrong today, if anybody knows.
Nothing's wrong today, declared Martell Hallam who had approached from behind. Swell set, eh, Mr. Deacon? Carries out your idea, don't it?
I hadn't dreamed of anything so magnificent, Ambrose replied.
This is an exact copy of one of the rooms in the Romanoff palace at Petrograd before the Revolution. It was a hell of a lot of trouble to get it right, but it's worth it. That malachite table, that Sèvres vase, everything's real.
Does it make any difference? Ambrose asked innocently.
Difference! Hell yes! Every God damn thing has to be real in any set I work in. How can an actor feel anything if he's playing with fake stuff? Why, I make the girls wear French underclothing even if they don't have to undress in the picture. I even pick out perfumes.
Perfumes? Do they photograph?
You'd be surprised, Deacon, but they do. Certain perfumes act as aphrodisiacs. Others repell. If I spray a room with Pois de senteur de chez moi you ought to see how the actors begin to behave. What's your idea, he went on without pausing, for the scene in the mountains, the scene in the peasant's hut?
Just what do you mean? Ambrose queried. Then, Isn't it clear in the script?
Oh, I don't pay any attention to a script. I look at it a couple of times, then I throw it away. By the time I get through I'll make something of your idea. No offence intended. You see, you fellows who write for the stage don't quite get the hang of pictures at first. Now there are a hell of a lot of details in this script that are all wrong for picture technique. Oh, I know you been over it, Phil, but you left plenty of bilge in here out of courtesy to Ambrose Deacon, the great playwright. I always have the same trouble when I engage outsiders. Probably on the whole it's a good thing. You playwrights buck us up, put us on our mettle. When I get through with this script it'll be O.K., but of course I have to work harder on it than I would if one of the boys around here had hatched it. I went over the whole affair with Phil first, but it's while we're grinding film that I make the most changes. And say, wait till I get to the cutting-room. Now, about that scene in the mountains, I wanted to know if you had any ideas about the set.
I'm sure whatever you suggest will be all right, Ambrose assured him.
Now you're speaking! I guess this picture'll be a hit. I wish more playwrights were like you. I wouldn't have any trouble then. The art director of this firm ought to be laying sewers in the streets, but when I tell him what I want things come out all right.
As Martell Hallam strolled away, Philip Lawrence muttered to Ambrose: The moronic bastard! How he gets away with it, I don't know. His pictures are all wows. He's got the brains of a night-watchman, but he never has a flop. He used to be a stage-hand and did his stuff in the cauliflower industry on the side. He's got a powerful left and isn't above pushing in the face of an evil ham now and then.
Auburn Six who, aided by her maid, had been adding powder to her make-up and arranging her hair before a dressing-table with a mirror backed up against the set, now approached Ambrose.
Well, how do you think you like pictures? she inquired.
It's all so new to me, he replied. I'm not used to it yet. When do they take pictures?
On first Thursdays and the twenty-ninth of February. You'll never get used to it. No one ever does. I've been made up and worked up emotionally now for four days. By the time they photograph this scene I'll be old enough to play a witch in Macbeth.
The set was now filling rapidly with extra people and the leading actors had been summoned from their dressing-rooms. Philip pointed out an old gentleman in evening-dress with a broad red satin ribbon across his white shirt-front.
That's Karl Wenig, the famous German actor who used to work for UFA. L.L.B. got tired of reading his notices, comparing him to disadvantage with the American hams. So they engaged him at a tremendous salary and now they're trying to kill him with the fans.
How can they do that?
Easy. He's playing the villain of this piece. Of course he'll be magnificent. On the stage he'd run away with the show, but the fans don't like actors who play unsympathetic rôles.
Why do they want to kill him? Why don't they build up his reputation?
He's too expensive for the magnates. They'll wait till the fans walk out on him and then renew his contract cheap. It isn't for nothing that Griesheimer used to run a cloak and suit business. Why, I believe he'd pull a fire if it wouldn't take so long to build the place up again.
Is that what Invincible is doing with Imperia Starling? Ambrose found an appropriate opportunity to inquire.
Imperia's expensive at any price. Nobody else out here would have her. She's through.
You don't think Griesheimer . . . ?
Lawrence laughed. Say, he'd take her on as an extra girl. Invincible's stung good and hard. Oh boy, wait till her contract runs out. She'll be lucky to get twenty-five cents a week.
Music!
The vast crowd of well-dressed extras began to spin about the set to the languorous measures of Love's Dream After the Ball. In and out among them threaded Auburn Six in the arms of the Russian General. It was not long before Hallam lifted his hand: the music stopped and everybody in the set stood still.
Auburn, I didn't see that, he cried. Wait till you're closer to the camera. Get clear of the crowd. Make it clean cut. If the audience misses that scene they won't understand the next. Try it again. Music!
The dancers again went through with the scene and this time Ambrose saw Auburn extract a paper from the Russian General's coat, while she danced with him. The Russian General seemed to be unaware of the theft.
Stop! cried Hallam. Say, you in the yellow dress! You watched Miss Six do that! Look at your partners. Listen to the music. Don't anybody look at Miss Six.
The scene was rehearsed again, apparently successfully, for lights were presently added, powerful, glaring lights, and the cameras, set at several different angles, began to grind. The scene was taken five separate times, and then close-ups were made of Auburn robbing the General's pocket.
That's all for today, Hallam announced. Turning to Ambrose, he remarked, Well, I got it, didn't I?
Perfectly, Ambrose assured him. The playwright clipped and lighted one of Griesheimer's Meridiana Kohinoors.
I suppose a lot of scenes take place in this set, he remarked to Philip Lawrence as they walked away.
No, that's the only one. Oh, I guess there's another with Auburn alone, if Hallam decides to leave it in.
But isn't it awfully expensive to build a big set like this for so little use?
Expensive! I should think it is expensive. Everything Hallam does is expensive. If you handed him a script calling for a single set in a London dive he'd make it expensive. Why, you ought to see the ice palace they're constructing down in a corner of the lot for Spider Boy. Hallam's injected a ski contest into the picture which means dragging the whole company hundreds of miles to a mountain where there's plenty of snow and keeping 'em there till they learn how to use skis. He'll throw in a caravan with camels and the burning down of the Paris Opéra if he can think of a way to do it. This picture will cost two millions before he gets through with it.
Two millions!
At least. He'll take about sixty-four reels of which at the outside they'll use only twelve. If it doesn't turn out to be a super-special they'll only use six. The rest of this grand opus will lie scattered on the cutting-room floor.
But why?
It's part of the game. Griesheimer wouldn't have any respect for Hallam if he didn't waste money. He has to waste more jack than any other director to maintain his position. In each succeeding picture he has to waste more than he did on the one before. It's part of the bunk.
But doesn't Griesheimer know it's bunk?
Of course he knows. He groans and moans and swings his arms about and curses and yells that Hallam's got to cut down expenses, and Hallam gets more profane still and swears he'll leave the lousy joint and go to work for Invincible, but both of 'em know they're only acting a scene and Hallam knows if he spent a penny less that Griesheimer would think he was no good. So they compromise by paying some extra girl nine instead of ten dollars a day and then Hallam orders a flock of solid-gold gondolas or imports Zuloaga to paint a drawing-room set for a script that revolves about the life of a New England farmer.
As time went on Ambrose had further opportunity to study this habit of Hallam's, not altogether, he learned, idiosyncratic with this director. The playwright, after his first day on the lot, secured from Lawrence a copy of the script, which he read, but Hallam's departures from this script were so frequent and radical that Ambrose was constantly being surprised. The ski contest was abandoned because the tentative date set for the release of the film apparently would not leave Hallam time enough to carry it through. He substituted for this a drowning in a lake and from a map picked a lake in the distant Rockies as the only appropriate location. There were plenty of other lakes nearer to hand, but Hallam insisted that no other would do. The scene was elaborate as it involved a Russian picnic. Some seventy-odd persons, as well as camera men, star, and leading actors, were carried by rail a few hundred miles only to discover that there had been no water in this particular lake for several years. Hallam was not nonplussed. He brought his company back to Los Angeles and filmed the scene within walking distance of the studio. The episode never reached the screen: it died on the cutting-room floor.
It had been Ambrose's intention to leave Hollywood while the picture was being filmed—he could find no logical reason for remaining—but Philip Lawrence set him right.
You've got to hang around so they can consult you, he explained. Of course they won't take your advice, but they're paying you and so they'll go through the form of asking your opinion from time to time. It's done, and that's that!
So Ambrose remained in his bungalow at the Ambassador and, almost imperceptibly to him, became involved to an amazing extent in the social life of the community. There were bathing parties everybody had a pool of warm blue water on his own estate: even at the beach no one ever thought of bathing in the ocean—ping-pong parties, tennis parties, bridge parties, dances and dinners. Wilhelmina and Philip Lawrence dragged him about to these and after a brief period of futile objection he had submitted to being dragged without making further protest. In a way, after he had become accustomed to meeting the same people day after day—for the same group would go almost in a body from one house to another—he didn't mind so much. With Ambrose habit was all-important.
Wilhelmina had not secured a part in Spider Boy—in the new Russian version there was no suitable rôle—but L.L.B. had signed her up for a year and presently she was to do another picture with Dick Ruby, this time in the capacity of leading woman. It seemed reasonable to suppose that she would be a star before long.
Ambrose was assuredly growing accustomed to Wilhelmina. She had seen to that. At first she had attacked him by telephone with requests that he escort her hither and thither. It was not long before he felt sufficiently comfortable with her to assume the initiative. Never, however, was he quite easy under her banter. It would be more exact to say that he was never quite certain when she was serious and when she was spoofing. One day she would assure him that the films were all her life and ambition. Another, that they were but a stepping-stone to a career of quite another kind. It was not seldom, either, that she referred to the possibility of becoming his wife. He found this joke embarrassing. Nevertheless constant association with this lovely girl had brought to him the realization that he would miss her if she went out of his life.
One day they motored to Santa Barbara and lunched at El Mirasol.
At table Wilhelmina demanded: Ambrose, aren't you ever going to take me seriously?
But, Billie, you know my trouble is I always take you too seriously.
I mean when I propose to you.
You never have.
I'm always proposing to you. You're the only man I've ever considered marrying.
You're kidding me.
Wilhelmina lighted a cigarette. Perhaps, she said. What do you think?
I think you're kidding me.
It was late in the evening before they returned home, Wilhelmina driving. Bidding her good-night at the foot of the stairs leading to her apartment, he entered his own room. As he turned on the lights he learned that he faced a determined man holding a levelled revolver. Even in the advanced state of terror which his unwelcome visitor had precipitated, he recognized Abel Morris.